Business and government entities use computer systems to perform various data operations. The computer systems have both computer hardware and computer software. The computer software directs the computer hardware to host web sites, sales applications, media content, financial databases, customer records, and the like. Over time, these computer systems have grown too large and unwieldy for many operators.
Data center technologies have been introduced to handle this complexity. Data centers deploy large amounts of hardware servers and data storage units that efficiently share support systems like enclosures, cooling, communications, and power. The data centers use advanced software like hypervisors, virtual machines, and middleware to provide a virtual interface between the software applications and the computer hardware. The advanced software allows the software applications to share the computer hardware in an organized manner that meets the computer processing and data storage needs of each application. This hardware sharing typically entails technologies such as virtualization, containerization, or versioning to logically separate the software applications, middleware, databases, and virtual machines that are executing within the shared data centers.
Computer system maintenance is required in these data centers. Software components need to stop and restart to integrate new software features. Hardware components need to stop and restart to clear circuitry. To perform the computer system maintenance, the data centers use orchestration software that directs the hypervisors to stop and restart various software and hardware components. In many computer maintenance situations, a shutdown sequence is observed where some software components must be stopped or started before other software components. For example, a web server is usually stopped before the virtual machines and databases that support the web server are stopped. Another secondary web server and its supporting software components may need to start before the web server stops.
In global data center deployments, the massive level of computer maintenance becomes daunting. Unfortunately, the massive workload is compounded by a scarcity of time, because many maintenance operations are performed under severe time pressure. To handle these issues, computer maintenance personnel have developed maintenance software that directs the computer systems to automatically start and stop the hardware and software components in an orderly manner.
The maintenance software does not handle these massive shutdown and startup operations in an efficient and effective manner. The hypervisors and virtual machines do not provide enough data about their execution environment to support these massive shutdown and startup operations. The software applications themselves are not configured for efficient and effective computer system maintenance.